Weather vane mod, watson, la crosse, etc etc

Hi all,

I started off with a Watson 8681 and now have a better station. Both stations, like many others all have the same issue with the wind vane spinning round uncontrolled in light, variable winds.

Years ago I copied a mod that I saw somewhere, adding a bigger part to the vane, adding weight to the nose etc but this time I did not want to modify the vane itself. I wanted to control it without adding stress to the bearing or stopping it from being accurate altogether.

So, I found a solution which has been excellent so far. I used a piece of Velcro, the softer “loop” part not the harder “hook” part, and wrapped it round the shaft that the vane is sitting on top of so that the loops were just gently touching the bottom edge of the wind vane shaft.

I then watched it and couldn’t believe how well it worked, just exactly the right amount of friction to stop it wildly spinning but at the same time allow it to stop where it should for the correct wind direction. Only downside is that I don’t think it will last for months on end, but for me it works better than other mods I have tried.

Im attaching a picture to show what I mean…

Michael